A Small Guide For Gamescom

Howdy, Josh here. So I just finished my first Gamescom. It was three days filled with demos, networking, meeting new people, meetings, and discoveries. I went with the 3 day Trade Fair pass with the intention of pitching, networking and meetings. I had many questions leading up to the event, some answers I found online and some I had to ask, but there’s a few things I found out along the journey as well. Keep in mind, as everyone’s journey is different, this can be subjective but hopefully it helps in someway!

I started these Dev Campfire posts as a way to document and share what I’ve learned along the way. You can read my previous post here: Dev Campfire: Localization and Text

Goals for Gamescom

What are your goals for Gamescom? This will affect what you’ll need to do and prep for.

Exhibiting

Are you exhibiting? Great! These are the questions you’ll need to ask yourself:

How will you acquire a booth?
Is there any local government assistance, grants or programs you can utilize?
Do you need to promo materials (cards, fliers, etc)?
What press will you reach out too?
Will you need help with the booth?

There’s two places the games are exhibited, in the Business Area and The Public Indie Area. The Game booths exhibiting in the business areas are supported by their local government but not accessible for the public to play. This is totally valid as you may be just after Press, Publishers, or other developers to showcase too. If you plan to showcase in the Indie section you’ll most likely to apply to Indie Arena Booth for a spot to exhibit.

Networking and Pitching

Are you networking and pitching? These are the questions you’ll need to ask yourself:

How will I organize to meet with people?
Is there any local government assistance, grants or programs you can utilize?
what materials do you need (business cards, digital pitch decks, Press kit, etc)?
What people will you reach out too?

So you’re going to Gamescom to Network and/or Pitch? Cool, Gamescom has a meeting app for you to connect with potential people of interest and create meetings for the event. A lot of people use MeetToMatch also, so be aware you may be bouncing between the two apps.

Meetings

Once the Gamescom App goes live you will be able to see which people and companies are attending Gamescom and arrange meetings with them. Same goes for MeetToMatch, but it requires a fee to use. MeetToMatch does go live much earlier (around June). So if you want to be able to get in early and arrange meetings I suggest MeetToMatch as well. Keep in mind you can keep organizing meetings right up to the event and even during. I had people send requests a day or two before the event. Don’t worry if people don’t respond closer to the event date, it picks up a lot from August onwards.

Also make sure you research who you’re meeting with so you know what each other are looking for.

Organizing your time

I feel the best advice I have, is keep some slots free just in case of any last minute opportunities. You’ll have various people contact you to pitch services. This may be what you want but there’s a lot of people and your time is limited! Only meet if you absolutely want to network or meet. Don’t waste each other’s time.

You will also need to take breaks or hurry between meetings, so there’s no need to completely have everything back to back. You’ll have 30 minutes to chat and it doesn’t take much to run over time with meetings as well. All this is pretty obvious but worth pointing out.

Where to meet

Gamescom has business meeting areas on each level in the Trade Fair halls. You can either book a table at one of these spots, use your country’s booth or just a place as a designated meeting point. I was lucky enough to be able to use the meeting table supplied by the Australian booth area.

It’s worth thinking about where you’re meeting people as sitting space is limited. You can organize and change the location as it suits, but keep in mind, you’ll be traveling from meeting to meeting. If you don’t have a meeting area to sit at, it’s worth finding the nearest food area with seating or asking the table manager at the business meeting areas if there are any free tables. It just makes it easier to pitch if you have to pull out a laptop or keep someone’s attention.

The first day I had a meeting outside of Gamescom, so I left enough time for travel to and from the venue, blocking out time slots. I’m glad I did, because there was no way I was going to make it back in time and in the end allowed me to walk around and map the layout.

Networking materials

If you are pitching, you’re not going to have enough time to demo the game itself and your contact will be asking questions. Your pitch deck should ideally go for a duration of 12 minutes max and show off your unique selling points cleanly as possible. You can also try to show off a trailer but you’re generally going to be talking all the way through a noisy environment.

We had a small flyer with some kick-ass art that linked to a downloadable pitch deck to hand out as well. It was handy and accessible and people left the meeting with a physical reminder which was great.

You should have a business card, QR code or some kind of easily accessible way for people to access your project or details. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to follow up with you. The same applies for networking. I had an unplanned pitch so handing out these project flyers made it easy for them to get more info on the project.

Avoid having to download anything on the day and have it all ready to go on a device or laptop because wifi will most likely be slow or possibly absent.

Travel

Traveling to Gamescom

Just wanted to do a small section with a few travel tips. Purchasing the Trade Fair ticket granted free public transportation to and from the event. Gamescom is located at Koelnmesse (Cologne Trade Fair) and is just one stop from Cologne Central Station, which makes it super easy to jump on and get to. That being said we booked accommodation near the station. Something to remember when booking a place to stay in Cologne.

So one tip I got the drop on early is accommodation. Gamescom, being the event that it is, means a lot of tourism occurs at this exact time every year. You’ll want to book as soon as you can because the cheap and close places will go very quickly leading up to the event. June/July is probably an ideal time to start. With the event happening annually, accommodation will usually have an increased prices for this period. Good thing you can claim it, right!

August is Summer for Cologne. Which means it’s really hot. We had a room close to the station but it had no air-con. It did have a fan but it was still hot. Something to think about, make sure you stay hydrated throughout the day and event.

Devcom also takes place prior to Gamescom on the Monday and Tuesday, so you can round out the week with all the events. There’s also industry parties that happen after Gamescom, great for that extra networking.

Conclusion

My Gamescom Takeaways:
– Pitched to a Publisher I wasn’t expecting to and was able to make contact and follow up post Gamescom.
– Beneficial for indies to network.
– Met some new people I clicked with and might work with in the future.
– Discovered some new tech that will help our projects.

Gamescom was a blast to go to, it surpassed my expectations. I met amazing and passionate people, pitched to new companies, learned new solutions to processes, broadened my network and even got to pitch Junklands to my dream publisher. It’s all consuming in the best way, you will get lost but least there’s something to play on every corner.
If I’m missing something please let me know, always happy to have people add onto these. Hopefully this will help someone out there with organizing their time at Gamescom.

– Josh

Illustrations by Manfred Steger